Wish you were here on informal mediated communication

Communication between far away friends, or between family, can become (emotionally) intense from time to time. Although developments like internet based video telephony seem to be an improvement over regular, voice only, telephony, little is known about what is exactly important in these type of communication settings. If optimal communication quality is the main goal, it is of importance to know what to optimize, record, and what to play back, and how and when.

Research conducted so far in this area is sparse and mainly focused on matching face-to-face communication as closely as possible, a situation where both are being situated at the same location; a feeling of being there (Hollan & Stornetta, 1992). Since video telephony communicates a visual image of the person, one may assume that it is better than voice only telephony considering this feeling of being there. Hollan and Stornetta (1992) found, however, that social presence and information richness are rated only slightly better in a video telephony setting, when compared to an audio-only setting.

Ideally, Hollan and Stornetta conclude that only when people who are situated in two separate but adjacent rooms would, instead of walking to the other person, use the system to communicate, co-located people have indeed no advantage over non co-located people. This ideal is probably very hard to accomplish: "Requiring one medium to imitate the other inevitably pits
strengths of the old medium against weaknesses of the new" (p. 121).

But there are communication systems that do have this property, improving communication for both those who are far away and near by. E-mail and instant messaging, for example. E-mails are sent to co-workers in the next room, e.g. in order to share documents, and frequently I hear students admitting that they have been using instant messaging to 'call' housemates for 'Dinner!'

Instead of focusing on presence, Hollan and Stornetta argue that we should focus on communication instead. With a focus on communication one can also focus on what one medium does better than the other, instead of only worrying about approximating the natural 'medium' of air that is between people talking face to face. For personal communication Hollan and Stornetta's notions of clarity (removing ambiguity) and feedback (removing ambiguity in understanding the response) seem to be important, but also the earlier mentioned feature of a-synchornous communication may have its benefits to presonal communication as well. Simply approximating what we have today as face-to-face is not bringing communication in general to a higher level.

Additional evidence in support for rejecting the hypothesis that simply more bandwidth leads to improved communication (inspired by the bandwidth theory) per se is reported by Whitaker (2003) and Sellen (1995). Sellen (1995) compared several communication prototypes (including audio only and video based, and combinations of both prototypes), but all showed comparable, not significantly different, symptoms of depersonalization, psychological distance and increased formality when compared to unmediated face to face communication. The face to face setting led to more turn taking, interruptions, and was in general experienced as less formal. However, Sellen (1995) did find that participants preferred the video based systems over those without. They felt as if it better accommodated turn-taking; support for interruptions. In general it was felt as resulting in a more natural conversation. Modern video telephony systems do indeed offer the ability to attend to a speaker in particular and in general to keep track of a speaker.

Whittaker (1995) underlines the importance of investigating what makes face-to-face interaction so special in interpersonal communication, but maybe the scope is too limited and neglects the role of visual information in the communication of other aspects. Whittaker mentions two alternative potential uses of video: "video for connection and opportunistic communication" and "video-as-data". Visual cues, for example, can also be used for detecting whether somebody is available for a chat, and or to study objects together with the person we are talking with. While experimental results are still lacking, Whittaker sees more potential in these alternative uses of video, arguing that earlier experiments so far showed no to little improvement over audio-only communication systems. Sellen (1995) also stretches that people focus on objects, rather than faces when given the choice in collaborative work systems. This data preference over tele-presence was confirmed for multimedia systems by Anderson, Smallwood, MacDonald, Mullin and Fleming (2000), who investigated a travel service system and a financial service simulation where people had to either book a trip or arrange an appropriate mortgage deal. In personal communication, one could think of, e.g., a photograph that is shared between the two persons, or another object of high emotional value to one of the persons.

Additionally, current communication systems lack support for reciprocity and feedback, and control (Sellen, 1995). Reciprocity and feedback refers to knowing whether one is attending, and whether you are well understood.

To conclude, improving communication is not simply a matter of increasing the bandwidth; improving audio or video quality will not lead to better, face-to-face like, communication per se. It is therefore important to rethink the way communication takes place. Some of the key areas that should be addressed are the lack of spatiality (the ability to look around), direction, and good means of approaching (Sellen, 1995). Additionally, there is still much room for improvement in reciprocity and feedback. But most important, designers should think about what should be communicated first, then think about how to accomplish that. Simply copying face to face communication only leads to comparitively poorer reproductions.

References

Hollan, J., Stornetta, S. (1992). Beyond being there. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems(ed. Bauersfeld, P., Bennet, J., Lynch G.). Monterey, California, United States, p. 119 - 125

Sellen, A.J. (1995). Remote conversations: The effects of Mediating Talk with Technology. Human-Computer Interaction, 10(4). p. 401 - 444

Whittaker, S. (1995). Rethinking video as a technology for interpersonal communication: theory and design implications . Int. J. Human-Computer Studies, 42. p. 501-529

Whittaker, S. (2003). Theories and Methods in Mediated Communication. In: Handbook of Discourse Processes, LEA, Mahwah, NJ, 2003.

Anderson, A.H., Smallwood, L., MacDonald, R., Mullin, J. and Fleming, A. (2000). Video data and video links in mediated communication. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 52(1). p. 165 - 187